The Brink (#0136) - Mininova, Part 4

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Klaudia flinched. The sound of the gun was deafening. The bullet slammed into her cheekbone...

...and dripped harmlessly onto the floor.

Klaudia pressed a finger to her cheek, stunned. Her fingertip came away covered in a strange, silvery liquid that ran down her knuckle and collected on the floor in large shiny drops. She had seen mercury once, in science class when she was a teenager; this looked similar, but...the way it moved was even more unusual, almost as though it had a mind of its own.

There was a thud on the floor next to Klaudia's hand. She yelped and pulled away. It was the gun. Jack's gun. She looked up.

Something was happening to Jack. Something...unnatural. His skin was somehow shrinking, pulling taut around his already emaciated body. His jaw bone creaked and clicked, stretching wider and wider as his teeth flaked and crumbled inside his mouth. His eyeballs swelled to the size of grapefruits and turned black. He clawed at his throat with large, bulbous fingertips.

He was in excruciating pain.

Klaudia stared at the sight, horrified, but unable to look away.

"It's probably best if you don't look." A softly-spoken female voice with an American accent, clear and audible over the roar of the flames.

Trembling, Klaudia turned her head. A man and a woman stood just inside the shattered front door of the apartment.

The woman was holding long, copper-plated instrument, its surface covered by an intricate network of pipes, dials and gauges.